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Why We Oppose the Ryan-Murray Budget Deal

The Senate is set to vote on the fiscally irresponsible budget negotiated by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) soon. FreedomWorks has issued a key vote notice declaring that we will deduct the scores of any member of Congress who votes for it on our congressional scorecard. As you may imagine, this news hasn’t thrilled the Washington establishment.

Needless to say, we’re used to taking heat because of our principled stances. FreedomWorks isn’t here to make friends with corrupt politicians. We don’t care about rubbing shoulders with the elites at the fancy cocktail parties. We’re here to put our country on the right track. Our special interest is liberty.

Speaker Boehner has publicly lashed out against fiscally conservative groups that do not support the budget deal. He claims that we are “misleading our followers” and our complaints are “ridiculous.” This is because we dare to expose the horrible details of the phony budget deal. And no, there is nothing “ridiculous” about opposing a budget deal that will increase spending and the outrageous national debt.

Other congressmen are being critical about our consistent position. Supporter of the budget deal Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said that, “you can’t spend your time making perfect the enemy of the good.” That quote makes sense out of context. We realistically understand that steps in the right direction are necessary to achieve a free society. The huge growth in government didn’t happen overnight. And it’s not going to go away as quickly as we would like.

But here’s the thing: make sure that the policies you are advocating for are actually good. We support good policies. They are certainly not the enemy of perfect. We’re not just saying “no” to the budget deal just because. It goes much deeper than that.

We have good reasons to oppose the budget. This terrible budget is even worse than the status quo.

The budget disregards of the sequester savings, the only spending control achieved in recent history. It would increase spending $63 billion above the budget caps set by Budget Control Act of 2011. Supporters of the budget claim that it contains no tax hikes. That sounds great at first, but the bill contains various fees. If the government is forcibly taking your money, does it matter what it is called?

Not really. These fees are not being used to balance the budget. The purpose of the fees is to cover up the breaking of the spending caps.

It’s interesting what the budget deal does not include: reform to entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up nearly two-thirds of the budget. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that every penny of the federal budget will go to entitlement spending and interest on the debt by 2025. But the budget deal doesn’t even attempt to fix this nightmare.

Supporters of the budget claim that it will supposedly reduce the deficit. But all those savings are back-loaded. They won’t happen anytime soon. Under the budget deal, we are supposed to trust Congress to make cuts in 2016. Excuse us for being a little pessimistic, but we’re not holding our breath. As we’ve seen time and time again, these kinds of promised spending cuts down the road never seem to materialize.

After all, the main purpose of this budget deal is to get rid of the spending cuts promised to us in 2011. So let us get this straight: we need to pass this bill that promises spending cuts in three years to get rid of the spending cuts promised two years ago? We aren't fooled by Washington’s deceitful tricks.

Some Republicans will reluctantly vote for this awful bill to get rid of the Pentagon spending cuts in the sequester. Why do some Republicans fully support cuts in domestic spending but become big government cronies when it comes to Department of Defense spending? The national debt is over $17 trillion. There is wasteful and harmful spending in every single government department that needs to go.

More Republicans need to get serious about reducing Pentagon spending. And they especially shouldn’t be willing to reverse spending constraints in exchange for a fiscally reckless budget.

We want real spending constraints. We want a budget that cuts spending and reduces the national debt. The Ryan-Murray budget does neither and that’s why we must oppose it.

Team, why can't you guys stop this nonsense and develop a long ball plan. Hey maybe something like, win the senate in 2014 and the white house in 2016. Use the budget deal to show the american people that there will NEVER be any real reform of budgets, pensions or entitlements until Republicans control the senate, period. Why fight this battle and distract from the best issue the Democrats have ever handed us Obama Care. The only news we need to see is how bad this is, how many folks are impacted and how many jobs are lost. Sit down with the RNC and map out a strategy to win. It seems like your strategy is to fight. remember you have to fight to win but fighting by itself does not guarantee victory. I agree with with everything you guys say but lets get real and focus on victory. With this non budget deal out of the way and no shut downs for 2 years there is no excuse for not winning 10 senate seats and 25 house seats. Lets win!!!!!!!!!!

There is significant transpartisan movement in the United States Senate to bring long overdue reforms to the justice system. A number of bills have already been introduced, including measures that would reform civil asset forfeiture statutes (FAIR Act), address mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent low-level offenders (Smarter Sentencing Act), and expungement or sealing the records of nonviolent offenders (REDEEM Act).

Realizing spending was getting out of hand, Congress passed the 2011 Budget Control Act to cap spending on both defense and non-defense discretionary spending. However, Congress being Congress, they have become adept at finding ways to increase spending beyond the caps without technically going above the caps.

Realizing spending was getting out of hand, Congress passed the 2011 Budget Control Act to cap spending on both defense and nondefense discretionary spending. However, Congress being Congress, they have become adept at finding ways to increase spending beyond the caps without technically going above the caps.

Suppose that officials from federal, state, and local governments developed a new system of collecting revenue at the beginning of the year. Instead of taking portions from each American’s paycheck throughout the year, they decided to take every cent Americans earned from January 1st until the day that all revenue had been collected for the year.

President Obama released his latest budget, a plan that would spend $4 trillion next year and $50 trillion over the next decade. The plan is packed with goodies from free community college to free preschool to increased infrastructure spending. The budget blows past the spending caps that Obama signed into law in 2011.

With solid control of both the House and the Senate, one of the clearest mandates delivered to the Republicans in Congress was to repeal the onerous takeover of health care known as ObamaCare. This year, the new Congress has the greatest opportunity yet to fulfill that mandate – by using the budget process known as reconciliation. As millions of Americans are forced to pay a fine for not buying health insurance, and with millions more still struggling with high premiums and deductibles, there is no reason why Republicans should not use a tactic that can place a full repeal of the so-called “Affordable Care Act” upon the president’s desk.

The White House is offering more details about President Barack Obama's FY 2016 budget proposal in advance of its formal release on Monday. Politico is reporting that the administration will call for an end to the sequester -- across-the-board cuts to the rate of spending increases enacted in 2011.

The Congressional Budget Office has released its annual budget outlook for the next decade, showing that the budget deficit will continue to fall in the current fiscal year, as well as next year, before gradually beginning to rise steadily again, thereafter. The media mostly talking about this aspect of the report. The Associated Press, for example, ran with the headline: "CBO: Budget deficit to shrink to lowest level since Obama took office."

One of the ways the Obama administration managed to get ObamaCare through Congress was by keeping the cost of the law under $1 trillion. This was accomplished through various budget gimmicks and backloading costs in years at the end of the original budget estimates. These deceptive tactics are how the administration managed to get a score from the Congressional Budget Office purporting that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit by $124 billion.

In addition to proposing an onslaught of spending increases and tax hikes in his sixth State of the Union address, President Barack Obama will, according to The New York Times, "effectively declare victory over the economic hard times that dominated his first six years in office and advocate using the nation’s healthier finances to tackle long-deferred issues like education and income inequality."